Resource of Interest

Scott McLeod, who spoke at this past year’s VASCD Conference, made a big point (and a valid one, too) about the differences between individualization in education and personalization.Personalization, more than the former, gets used a lot in education circles, and a lot with educational technology products.

An article by Alfie Kohn recently got re-published by Tech and Learning magazine about Four Reasons to Worry About ‘Personalized Learning’. In it, he quotes Will Richardson, who basically equates “personalized” with “individualized” and personal as what we should mean when we say “personalized” or “personalization.” The easy way to remember? Something individualized is done to you, and something personal is from you. Both authors are endorsing personal learning, but Kohn especially is cautioning us to be leery of the term, especially when it is used by vendors.

I have likely misused the term myself. It’s important to make the correct distinction here. I think there is space in our world for both an individualized approach and a personal approach, although Kohn and Philip McRae tie the whole idea of individualization to behaviorist principles that at their worst, “establish[es] children as measurable commodities to be cataloged and capitalized upon by corporations.” Kohn advocates for social, project-based learning. He says:

In the best student-centered, project-based education, kids spend much of their time learning with and from one another. Thus, while making sense of ideas is surely personal, it is not exclusively individual because it involves collaboration and takes place in a community.

In Goochland today I see a mix of approaches towards learning, and sometimes, we do want to help support students either in groups or individually with study that is tailored to their current needs. We have never needed technology to help differentiate instruction (although it can help, a lot), and as Kohn points out, we have never needed technology to make learning personal. In the end, striving to personalize instruction means for us that we have to be flexible enough with our design for instruction to allow the perspectives, desires, interests, and emotions of our students to play a role in the learning experience. When and where digital tools can support that pursuit, we have some interesting new opportunities. Otherwise, in our pursuit towards individualization, we might take the time to weigh our efforts with individualization versus different opportunities for authentic learning.

When I came to GHS in 1999, I taught from two classrooms. The first was in the main building, which is currently the County Administration building. You can see me in a photo taken by students with a digital camera owned by the school at the time, an Apple “QuickTake” camera. For some reason, you could only maybe get 15 pictures with the thing before you would have to replace the batteries.

There’s a couple of things interesting to me in the photo, and by extension, my thinking about teaching with technology.

In 1999, I used a whiteboard. The space also would be used (with a screen) to project onto the wall (the lights would have to go down, as the brightness was only 600 lumens).

In the back, right, was my classroom server running Macintosh Manager. Above that, on the wall, was a web URL beginning with http://, that pointed to an internal IP address for my intranet. It’s where I placed a lot of materials, especially for my advanced classes. It was my own website that was updated daily with the day’s agenda, tutorials, and even videos.

I take no ownership of the overhead projector, save to note that the classroom was also used by other teachers.

Sometimes we really liked using the tables in the room and as alternative to the computers, which were arranged along the perimeter of the room.

Take aways:

We still today need easy, effortless ways to shift our work between one machine and the other, or at least to present it easily to be seen my multiple people,

Fixed designs, especially with relation to tools, often are compromises. The best spaces are flexible ones.

Facing kids against a wall was never great for trying to have conversations with students or to discuss their work that lived virtually.

That’s one reason I like iPads in our classrooms supporting 1:1 – they provide for more flexible modalities, they allow some sharing with large groups using AirPlay, and because of their size, they tend not to get in the way of seeing/communicating with others face to face.

I was inspired by the designs for learning outlined in this brochure from Steelcase. When you see the flexibility available, you kind of realize “there doesn’t have to be just one way to orient your room.” By extension, not just one way to teach.

When the New Goochland High School opened in 2001, I taught a single class in room C143. That afforded great space, and larger, more capable computers, but the flexibility factor was still negatively impacted. I am not sure I could have foreseen the current state of learning and what some teachers have come up with.

Kudos to teachers who are open-minded enough, and flexible enough as we use mobile technology, to re-think, and re-orient their instructional spaces. Now, if I could only get used to sitting on the Pilates balls.

It hasn’t been too long now since an idea made waves through education circles around flipping the classroom. It first emerged as a college methodology for courses. I first wrote about this in 2011, and I focused first on the “how-to” aspect of making your own videos. I have since learned more about this teaching methodology and have thought about it with more care. Educause does a nice summary of what the concept is and points out some watch-fors. They point out a few important things:

Flipping involves watching videos.

Video watching happens outside of class.

Video watching replaces receiving information in a lecture format.

Class time is used to apply the knowledge conveyed through video outside of class through a variety of activities, such as an interactive discussion.

Not everyone means the same thing when the term “flipping” is used. In other words, there may be important differences by what is taking place when we are having conversations about flipping the classroom.

Today, the practice is so popular that social spaces have opened for K-16 teachers on flipping. One example is the Flipped Learning Network.

A balanced article (by which I mean they don’t take a pro-flipping or anti-flipping stance) by ASCD’s Educational Leadershipcame out in March, 2013 positing that enough research had not yet been done to “prove” that flipping the classroom was what I might call a “home run.” They do cite some resources suggesting the lecture format is a good delivery methodology with it’s own set of caveats (more on this below). Of particular interest in the article to me was this:

The lack of hard scientific evidence doesn’t mean teachers should not flip their classrooms; indeed, if we only implemented strategies supported by decades of research, we’d never try anything new. Until researchers are able to provide reliable data, perhaps the best we can do is to ask, Do the purported benefits of flipped classrooms reflect research-based principles of effective teaching and learning?

The important question, however, is how long should we try?

Despite the article linked above that appeared with a citation in Educational Leadership, I’d argue that for many K-12 students a “lecture” is not a good method for instruction given other options. I’d define a lecture for this purpose to be teacher-led instruction, where students sit passively listening or actively taking notes, while a teacher talks, draws, reads, uses slideware (such as PowerPoint), and shows video demonstrations. Presenting information is sometimes necessary and so I am not saying lectures or lecture-type presentations should be outlawed. But they cite an article that used estimation strategy on math test data for ~6,000 students across 205 schools with 639 teachers. The TIMSS test from 2003 used in the study asked teachers if they presented material by lecture or by doing practice problems in the classroom (called effective teaching). The problem for me with this example is that it was not comparing constructivist-style pedagogies such as project-based learning in the classroom. What it did do was prove with some sophisticated mathematics that students likely gained more information from a lecture than working out problems for math classes.

But does that prove that lectures are effective at deeper learning? It likely depends on how talented your lecturer is to get us (the students) to think!

Let’s Revisit the Model

Let’s keep using math as a subject to illustrate the flipping mechanism again. Let’s make some assumptions. First, this is how we might frame “traditional” instruction for math:

Students are presented new material by the teacher (lecture).

Students work through an example problem or problems with the teacher (guided instruction).

Students work independently (or collaboratively with peers) on more problems, with the ability to ask for assistance in class (checks for understanding).

Students are assessed on the homework to prove acquisition of knowledge (formative assessment).

Flipping either uses the same constructs or perhaps even introduces new ones.

Here’s a basic flipped model:

Students are assigned homework to watch video clips that introduce new information (lecture).

Students may be assessed as part of their homework on how well they understood the information (or to prove they watched the videos) (formative assessment).

Students have the opportunity to ask questions in class before activities begin (checks for understanding).

Students come to class and work collaboratively or independently on problems (guided practice, independent practice).

(There isn’t necessarily a step 5; more time was spent learning new material at home rather than in class.)

So, there’s also an option for having a real #5:

Students use class time to apply the knowledge beyond the practice of problems and have an opportunity to apply this knowledge to working towards an authentic challenge.

This new opportunity may have been classified before as a type of “project” that would be assigned for homework. Now, the project work might take place in the classroom.

On the surface, flipping may have a real advantage in that it provides in-school time for constructivist learning, it allows the teacher to step away as a lecturer during in-school time to facilitate or assist practice, and it still provides the teacher the opportunity to share knowledge through a different medium of delivery and at a different time.

Are we all providing that constructivist experience?

You will notice above that I slip in there this idea that teachers have time now to learn with a constructivist approach, but there’s no agreement, I have found, that all “flippers” do this. To be specific, when I say “constructivist” I mean that we provide students an opportunity to play, tinker, or discover to find solutions to a problem. Many teachers apply this approach in a social setting, meaning that students are working together in groups.

I know some teachers do not provide this opportunity for trial-and-error, because of the perception that only limited time is available for instruction, and there is too much content to cover, given the length of the day, semester, or year.

I’d wager at this point that if a new method is not introduced, such as an active classroom discussion, inquiry, or a group project, we are not really changing much with the flipped model. We are just changing the location and time of day in which new information is presented. If that is the case, we provide less help when the knowledge is presented (lecture) as a trade-off for more time for guided and independent practice. This may be preferable at times, depending on the needs of the class on a particular topic being covered.

A critical standpoint

Sure, I think the flipped classroom is a preposterous unsustainable trend, masquerading as education reform, in which kids are forced to work a second unpaid shift because adults refuse to edit a morbidly obese curriculum.

Stager does not go into more details, I wonder if he’s looking at asking students to watch videos outside of the classroom as a method not to introduce constructivist (or any other active) learning opportunities into the the student’s day, but rather to add to in-class lecture time with canned lectures or presentations outside of class. Or, maybe he’s siding with others who question the value of homework all together!

I’ve learned that inquiry & PBL learning can be incredibly powerful in the hands of students. I would never teach any other way again. When students own their learning, then deep, authentic, transformative things happen in a classroom. It has nothing to do with videos, or homework, or the latest fad in education. It has everything to do with who owns the learning.

Is watching videos bad, then?

I’d wager that videos are not bad in light of the “a ha!” moment Ms. Wright had teaching math and science (she said so herself!). But if we can agree that the passive role (for the student) via delivery of content (by the teacher) that we call lecture is not the most ideal way to engage students with instruction, as it’s already been said, why is that okay by video instead of by a live person?

It shouldn’t be.

But as it comes up in a lot of the discussion on flipping, the Khan Academy is a website that has a lot of lecture-y videos on how to do math problems (and now other things). But I’m a fan of the site. Their practice problems and feedback for teachers can provide some nice formative assessment data on a student’s progress in math. The access to the lecture knowledge is nice for “when it’s needed” situations. That said, it may not be the best way for all students to learn. Some may do better with a different type of presentation by video, and others may learn better through reading about the information, or having a discussion with someone living and breathing. In general, however, that video library (or any library a teacher wants to create themselves) is an opportunity to painlessly and perhaps even more efficiently explain a concept with different perspectives when a student or the adaptive software thinks it is appropriate. More research is needed, of course.

Watching videos of how someone else is re-telling about their discovery of knowledge flies in the face of what Wright said that I think is so valuable, so golden. Who owns that knowledge, who will own the learning?

Let me give you another idea about how video can help us teach math. This matrix of videos are a collection of “three-act math tasks” designed from an inquiry-based, constructivist mindset about learning. These videos give context to math, challenging students through scaffolds on how to think about problems, that in least in some cases, are kind of interesting.

The problem with teaching this way is that it takes time if it’s new for the teacher. The teacher’s role changes. But looking at least a few of these examples might convince you that videos for math (or any other topic) aren’t necessarily bad at all. But these videos aren’t the ones we’d assign for homework watching, either. They provide visual and authentic evidence and get us thinking about how math can be used to provide evidence about what we’re observing, how math can help us answer somewhat interesting questions, and be applied in understanding the real world.

To start, we have to get beyond thinking about some test where problems will appear later in the year.

Conclusions

Flipping the classroom is a teaching paradigm that re-defines the role of homework for students. Instead of using that out-of-class time to practice tasks, a teacher designs that use of time for listening to a presentation of information. Evidence suggests that some students find these types of videos engaging, but others do not.

At its best, the re-distribution of time and sequence of learning activities might provide the opportunity for more guided and independent practice in the classroom. In addition, in lieu of this practice, flipping may provide the opportunity for more social forms of learning that include inquiry and problems that put the onus of knowledge acquisition on the student independently or within a learning group.

Critics of flipping the classroom point to lecture by video as a stale and less effective method for teaching content, including our example, math. That’s not to say that first forays into a new teaching paradigm can’t be exciting and “different” for students to attract positive outcomes. Some critics point to the ethical practice of assigning a “second duty” of work to students through homework. That debate will likely persist.

Common sense suggests that a variety of approaches can be tried by teachers to assess how these methods help or hinder students. At least in one case, a teacher who had the freedom to “flip” for her students later changed her mind and adopted a constructivist-based approach to learning mathematics instead of the flipping model. That is not to say that watching videos is bad. Changing class-time activities that eschew the lecture in favor of active participation by students seems to have been the general idea behind flipping. But everyone is not giving students a real alternative to lectures.

This October, 2013 story recounts the intricacies in trying to come to a firm conclusion on flipping. And part of that debate is centered on where it’s happening: K-12 or the college course.

For us in the public schools with younger students, I think there some things to consider if you are considering the flip:

What’s your stance on deeper learning and what do you do to get there? Flipping or not, if you’re not providing students the opportunities to learn through inquiry and by making mistakes and learning from them, we might consider a fresher paradigm for instruction that forces students to think critically. I am not sure that’s bad for homework, but you’ll find that the need for lecture has gone out the window.

Writing, as a pursuit, can be a private pursuit. Writing on a blog is not private, it’s public, but the funny thing is, you may not always feel you have an audience. One person could read your blog post, or 100s, and you don’t really get a reaction unless you have comments turned on and people have something to respond to. Writers also have more established forms of public sharing, through books, magazines, the newspaper, etc. Finally, a lot of writing that takes place in schools is not public nor private, it’s what we might call semi-public. Your teacher and maybe a peer would read your work. Often that writing is to a certain specification, to ensure you are practicing the craft of writing towards improvement.

So, it’s not often that we get to write in school. Illustrate our writing. And, have a guaranteed audience that we know will read our work and give us immediate feedback. But 4th graders at Goochland Elementary recently had this opportunity through a collaborative effort of ITRT Zoe Parrish and classroom teacher Krystle Demas. Demas’ students had the opportunity in class to help Ms. Parrish define what an ebook was, then they were told they would be writing their own! And then they’d have the opportunity to share their ebooks on their iPads with preschool students next door.

The books were created with an app we installed as part of our 1:1 pilot called Book Creator, which allows students to create ePub “books” with multiple pages, text, images, and you can even insert video and audio. Students added sound files to each page so that preschool students could be “read to” when the students no longer were there. Ms. Parrish has since loaded the eBook collection on the iPads used at GES specialty center so that the preschool students can continue to enjoy the books created for them by Ms. Demas’ fourth grade students.

The books can be read on a variety of platforms. On the Macintosh, you can use iBooks in OS X Mavericks, and on iOS, you can use iBooks. Access all the books and materials used to deliver the lesson here. Kudos to Ms. Parrish and each and every one of Ms. Demas’ students for their problem solving and application of very creative skills! From what I hear, the preschool students enjoyed the experience immensely.

One of the inspirations behind my research for my doctoral program is the theory of Seymour Papert. I was leafing through one his books tonight, looking at what I had highlighted several years ago when first reading the book.

He recalled a conversation with Jean Piaget about artificial intelligence, and a big idea Piaget had allegedly been repeating. It bears repeating here:

To understand is to invent.

Papert himself talked about computers as devices that ought to serve children as instruments to work and think with, for them to carry out projects with.

Papertian (a word?) thinking about computers really pre-dated the Internet generation. It’s important to recall that his thinking about computers went beyond productivity tasks like word processing; it extended to writing code–at any functional level–to both express creativity and to solve problems. Papert would later consult with the Governor of Maine when they started their One-to-One initiative. That fact alone is ripe for me looking to see what he might have said about access to all the Internet’s information.

I know the web for me has me using a computer far less for tinkering or just “playing.” I spend a lot of time reading news (whether it’s from webpages or Twitter) when I have computer time at home.

Piaget, of course, is a famous name in the field of educational psychology. His quote, above, shouldn’t be surprising, given that he’s the father of “constructivism.” Piaget likely wasn’t thinking of a computer as the only path towards his understanding is inventing claim. But it does come full circle, at least a bit for me, when we stop to consider what the “point” of remembering anything is (in school) when it’s all just a search (or Siri query) away. Access to information isn’t the same as understanding it. Now insert Piaget: to understand is to invent. We (you, me, the kids) have to apply that information towards the creation of something. But invent is such a more powerful word, isn’t it? I can create a line on a page, and you’re likely to say “well, John, you’ve drawn a line. Congrats.” You also rolled your eyes. And I’m guessing you wouldn’t say that I’ve “invented” a line. Invention implies, to my ears, that something functional has come about from what just took place.

And if you think now to what some of our teachers have been learning about with children’s engineering, not just in the projects, but in the wider methodology of handing a student a design brief and saying “now… figure it out!”, you can see Piaget all over that, right?

That’s where programming a computer, if you will, takes on import. When you’ve got the basics down, you’ve now got yourself a little lab where you can invent all kinds of things.

Last night, GES fourth grade teachers Nicole Carter, Krystle Demas, and Joe Beasley presented their recent classroom activities with iPads as part of Goochland Elementary’s Reflections presentation to the school board. Included in their presentation was video clips created both by Mr. Beasley and Ms. Zoe Parrish, our elementary instructional technology resource teacher. Mr. Beasley’s has been embedded below.

I was impressed with how each of the teachers so clearly shared the benefits they have seen so far this year with using iPads in the classroom. Goochland Elementary was our pilot location this year to explore 1:1 computing in grades 3-5. The students also did an excellent job at sharing their experiences. They got to share some posters they made embedded with Aurasma videos, QR codes, and then they performed a recent rap with the help of a beat from GarageBand off one of the student’s iPads.

I received an invitation some time ago to attend a World Faire at Goochland Elementary School. This was one of several outstanding G21 projects I looked forward to seeing come to life this year.

Students organized country stations around the cafeteria with interactive components designed for the iPad, for learning about each country. The most popular interaction, of course, was the food students made that came from around the world.

While the technology inclusion was cool, the most outstanding take-away for me from this well-organized event was the ownership students had of the content associated with each country. Students were enthusiastic about knowing the culture and customs of each country and were eager to share it with their peers and visitors. I had the fortune today to tour the fair with my colleagues Bruce Watson, Pete Gretz, Steve Geyer, and James Lane.

I had a great time working with Zoe Parrish and Tina McCay at GES for our first iPad Learning Exhibition. Our focus, really, was to answer that question: What does learning with an iPad look like? To answer the question for parents and community members, we wanted to showcase what we’ve accomplished so far with our iPad Pilot since this September. This event invited parents to scan QR codes with their students to learn about various projects undertaken across grades 3-5.

Dr. Gretz and I collaborated at the start of last summer on an article on the Goochland G21™ Instructional Framework. It was published today in the Virginia ASCD Journal. The focus on the edition was Taking on Challenges in Teaching, Learning, and Leading. Addressing the “softer skills” in an era of accountability with the Virginia SOL definitely is seen be me as “taking on a challenge.” But we can see each year through our G21 Faire submissions – and only through the ones we formally recognize – that our teachers and especially our students are up to the challenge.

It was a great pleasure to collaborate with, and learn from, Dr. Gretz in this endeavor. And it is great to share this edition with many other fine articles. In the end I’m glad we could share something special we have here in Goochland with the other educators from across the Commonwealth. Learn more about VAASCD here.

About this blog…

This is the blog of John Hendron, Ed.D., director of innovation & strategy for Goochland County Public Schools. Through this blog I share information for teachers, administrators and families dealing with learning and teaching with technology.